La Belle Indifference

October 28, 2014 12:30 PM

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I’m a new widow, so sometimes I’m oblivious. Like when Cat Stevens lyrics circle through my head—“And though you want things to last forever you know they never will…you know they never will”—all day long, and I don’t even realize it’s significant.

My husband of 31 years died a year ago last August, after a sudden 20-day stay in the hospital that, looking back, had all the elements of a slow-motion car accident. The immediacy of the transition was like having a baby—you go from being hugely pregnant to actual childbirth to being a new mother i...